133 



HISTORY OF THE BALLOON. 



Passing over the fables of the ancients, who pretended to the art of 

 flying, the first notion which we find of a balloon, is by the Jesuit 

 Francis Lana, in 1670, who asserted the possibility of raising a vessel by 

 means of metal balls, strong enough when exhausted to resist the 

 pressure of the external air; but, at the same time, so thin, as in the same 

 circumstances to be lighter than their bulk of air. To the possibility of 

 this, he says he sees no objection, except that the Almighty would never 

 allow an invention to succeed, by means of which civil government 

 could so easily be disturbed. A reason of this sort was all-powerful in 

 his age, which abounded in the knowledge of the minutest secrets of 

 Providence ; had the good father tried the experiment, he would have 

 found, that strength to resist the external air is incompatible with the 

 necessary degree of thinness in the material. After Cavendish had 

 ascertained how much hydrogen weighs less than air, it immediately 

 occurred to Dr. Black, that a light substance filled with this gas would 

 rise itself. But he did not pursue the idea further, and Carvallo, who 

 tried to put it in practice in 1 782, could not succeed in raising, by means 

 of hydrogen, any thing heavier than a soap bubble. The next and most 

 successful, were Stephen and Joseph de Montgolfier, who were paper 

 manufacturers near Lyons. They were good chemists, and had studied 

 natural philosophy, so that, as it has been remarked, we owe the dis- 

 covery of the balloon, either to paper makers being philosophers, or 

 philosophers being paper makers. Having tried in vain to confine a 

 sufficient quantity of hydrogen in paper, they next applied fire under- 

 neath the balloon. The experiment succeeded, and a balloon of 23,000 

 cubic feet (French) was raised with considerable force; this took place 

 in 1782, and is thus described by M. M. Montgolfier: "An organised 

 body, in a state of ignition, decomposes air and furnishes chalky, 

 mephitic, and imflammable gases. The state of ignition facilitates the 

 union of the eletric fluid with this body of vapour ; the heat arising 

 from combustion is concentrated, so as by itself to dilate the heaviest of 

 the gases, and make it specifically lighter than common air; therefore the 

 balloon rises, &c. It afterwards falls to the earth, because the heat is dis- 

 sipated, the vapours are concentrated and have lost their electricity." The 

 first public experiment was made at Anoonay near Lyons, June 5th, 1783. 



